About This Activity Type
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Overview These activities provide learners the opportunity to practice communicating verbal instructions. One activity participant will view an image and then communicate verbally about the appearance of that image to their partner. Their partner will then use cutting/gluing and/or drawing/coloring to attempt to recreate the image based on the verbal instructions without actually seeing the image. After attempting to complete the task, the two partners can compare the original image with the attempted recreation to see how accurate their verbal communication was. These activities are an effective platform for encouraging the development of authentic verbal communication. Participating in these activities usually leads naturally into activity participants learning to ask clarifying questions when the instructions they are given by their activity partner are unclear. |
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Methodological Background Although instruction giving activities are classified as information-gap activities, unlike some information-gap activities that have a limited number of potential outcomes, the instruction giving activities on this page have a wide enough variety of potential outcomes that it is therefore necessary for students to learn to use more advanced grammatical functions in order to convey precise meaning. Information-gap activities are a type of classroom communication practice exercise in both communicative language teaching (CLT) and task-based language teaching (TBLT). |
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Body-Parts Drawing Kit This activity provides an opportunity to learners to develop the ability to learn how to utilize relatively complex communication to describe the precise nature and location of a variety of body-parts on a monster character. Beginning with an outline of the monster's body shape, one of the two partners in each partner-pair must carefully follow their partner's instructions to accurately recreate the monster displayed on their partner's randomly chosen game card.
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Classroom Cut-&-Glue Kit An excellent opportunity to get repeated practice giving instructions about placing objects in specific locations in a classroom, this activity is suitable for English language beginners who are still learning basic vocabulary words and sentence construction. The vocabulary list for this activity includes words like 'paper,' 'pencil,' 'scissors,' and 'stapler.' Due to the grammatical nature of these words, students will also be able to learn about using the correct articles with countable/uncountable nouns.
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Flags Cut-&-Glue Kit For this activity, variously colored rectangles, circles, and stars can be cut and glued into different configurations to produce 32 real world flags. Printable cards for all 32 flags are also included, so students can be divided into partner-pairs, with one student verbally describing the flag on the card and the other student attempting to assemble a matching flag by cutting and gluing some of the provided printed components together onto a white, red, or blue background (also provided).
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Flags Coloring Kit Using a standard template that provides outlines of different shapes (including rectangles, stars, and circle of different sizes), one partner in each partner-pair must follow the other partner's instructions to attempt to recreate the flag shown on their partner's randomly drawing flag card. This activity is an opportunity to combine communication about colors and other adjectives with vocabulary used for directions giving, including 'left-side,' 'right-side,' 'top,' 'bottom,' and 'middle.'
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Robot Cut-&-Glue Kit This kit provides a printable PDF with a Robot Body and some Robot Parts that can be glued to "the top of," "the left-side of," "the right-sided of," "the bottom of," and "in" the robot. Students can complete the activity in pairs. With this activity, learners will get ample practice using key prepositions and propositional phrases. Students will need to learn how to communicate about 'left' and 'right' using a clearly established basis for perspective.
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Train Shapes Cut-&-Glue Kit This kit provides a printable PDF featuring a variety of shapes in different colors. The shapes can be used to create more than a dozen variations of a simple train engine. The printable shapes are accompanied by a set of 12 cards showing 12 different possible variations of the train engine. The first of two participants communicates verbally which color each shape in the train is, and the second participant must then try to construct a train that matches the one on the card.
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Flags Cut-&-Glue Kit
These variously colored rectangles, circles, and stars can be cut and glued into different configurations to produce 32 real world flags. Printable cards for all 32 flags are also included, so students can be divided into partner-pairs, with one student verbally describing the flag on the card and the other student attempting to assemble a matching flag by cutting and gluing some of the provided printed components together onto a white, red, or blue background (also provided).
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Cut and Glue Flag Components
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Cut and Glue Background Rectangles
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The chosen 32 world flags have all been handpicked to ensure that even students at a lower level of English skill will be able to successfully verbally describe all of the flags using just a few consistent phrases and a relative small number of vocabulary words.
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Cut and Glue Flag Components
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Flag Cards Printable Page
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Students can describe all 32 of the flags to their activity partner by first communicating which background color to begin with, and then instructing their partner to place either "tall" or "wide" rectangles of specific colors on different positions on the flag background.
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Armenia Flag Card
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Cameroon Flag Card
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For example, the Flag of Cameroon below can be described as having a yellow background, a tall green rectangle on the left side, a tall red rectangle in the middle, and a smaller yellow star in the middle.
The 32 flag choices allow students to repeat this activity enough times to develop a strong competency in the use of the included prepositional phrases.
Robot Cut-&-Glue Kit
This kit provides a printable PDF with a Robot Body and some Robot Parts that can be glued to "the top of," "the left-side of," "the right-sided of," "the bottom of," and "in" the robot.
Students can complete the activity in pairs. Partner Two randomly draws a Robot Card from the provided card deck and then, describes the robot without showing the card to Partner One.
Partner One then cuts out Robot Parts and glues them to the Robot Body to assemble a robot that matches the robot pictured on the Robot Card.
This allows students to get ample practice with the key propositional phrases.
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Robot Cut & Glue Sheet
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Robot Cards
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The Robot Cut & Glue Sheet includes everything necessary to create dozens of robot combinations with some simple cutting and gluing. First, the bottom 1/4th of the page is cut off. Then, based on Partner Two's communication, Partner One can cut out each individual Robot Part and glue it next to the correct side of the Robot Body printed on the top 3/4ths of the page.
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A Standard Robot Card
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A Standard Robot Card
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Robot Card With L/R Markers
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Teachers can choose between using the Standard Robot Cards or using a special set of cards with L/R Markers that will help students remember which side is their left and which side is their right.
Train Shapes Cut-&-Glue Kit
This kit provides a printable PDF features a variety of shapes in different colors. The shapes can be used to create more than a dozen variations of a simple train engine. The printable shapes are accompanied by a set of 12 cards showing 12 different possible variations of the train engine.
These materials can be used for an information-gap activity where the first of two participants communicates verbally which color each shape in the train is, and the second participant must use their partner's verbal instructions to try to construct a train that matches the one on the card they cannot see.
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Shapes Printable |
Layout Guides |
Each of the 12 provided cards has a different combination of colors for each of the train parts. Activity participants can refer to the parts as (from left to right, top to bottom) the 'front,' the 'body,' the 'wheel,' the 'chimney top,' the 'chimney,' the 'drive rod,' the 'cab top,' the 'cab,' and the 'window.'
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A Train Shapes Card
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A Train Shapes Card
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